In our American society, it seems to me that everybody is getting softer as the years go by. When I say “soft” I mean that people are not able to handle the way the real world used to be; if you didn’t do something right or you didn’t win, it was okay. People use to not cry about it and didn’t have to have everything they wanted, because things just didn’t work that way. In sports today, things have changed dramatically, from youth baseball leagues to nationwide facilities like the YMCA. I think it is time to start talking more about this topic because if we don’t, the people around us will continue to be babies. Participation trophies must be banned.

When I was younger, and just started to play sports, I always wanted to be the best around. I was pretty good, but when it came to the end of the season everybody wanted to be rewarded. Everybody always watches championship games played on TV, and in the end the one team that is the best gets a big shiny trophy. Everyone on their team celebrates for the commitment and the hard work they put in to be that good. Well, most kids that are into sports want that big trophy that normally the champion team gets, but times are changing. Now a days it seems like every league is giving away medals ribbons, trophies, you name it, in order to congratulate the young kids for putting the time and effort in. To me this is a terrible thing that has developed. Like I said there is a reason kids are becoming so soft. They are always thinking about how they can be rewarded instead of taking failure as a compliment. When you accept failure and really care about what you are doing wrong that causes you to lose. Instead you should drive yourself to fix the problem. When you accept this, you will be able to push yourself to make yourself better at whatever you are working on.
When I was in YMCA basketball I always hated there motto: “Everybody Plays, Everybody Wins.” This annoyed me so much because I was taught and raised that this kind of motto is wrong. People should be hard on the kids and not try to award everyone all the time, especially in sports. At the end of the season there has never been a championship game but at the end of the last game, they gave out participation ribbons. I did take the ribbon instead I disposed of it as soon as I got home, because I knew that it was wrong, and the only reason for them was to make you feel good about yourself.

One example of the results of this soft mentality was about 5 years ago in the summer baseball league tournament game my team won first place, so of course we got the bigger first place trophy and the runner up team got the smaller ones. Well one little kid on the opposing team started to cry because he didn’t get the nice first place medal. I think that having participation trophies and awarding kids for losing at a young age could have been a big factor in this scenario. I wish it was like the earlier days where people didn’t have everything that they wanted and weren’t treated so nice every time they wanted something.

By having participation trophies and awarding everyone the kids get accustomed to getting everything, so when they are older they still follow this concept and they always expect to be rewarded for everything. Instead of having trophies to congratulate the kids the people should use more disciplinary techniques to teach the kids that the only way you can get something is if you invest more time and care about bettering yourself. By doing this, it will straighten you as the person and make them understand that working is the number one key to success, not only in sports but in the real world.